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Carniero (1974)

Carneiro, Robert L. “Herbert Spencer’s ‘The Study of Sociology’ and the Rise of Social Science in America.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 118, no. 6 (1974): 540–54. http://www.jstor.org/stable/986404.

• [Mostly about Spencer, but picks up on p. 549 Sumner's story, which is "no longer well known."]

• Sumner was skeptical of evolutionary theory in the 1860's, unimpressed by Spencer's work then.
• Was "converted" to evolutionary thought around 1875-76 based on O.C. Marsh's study of horse evolution.

• Yale President Noah Porter didn't like Sumner using Spencers The Study of Sociology as a textbook.
  • Porter was a Christian, a moral philosopher, and a Platonist.
  • Knew it was appealing for undergraduates, and didn't like that.
• "Liberals" in 1880 sided with Sumner. "Conservatives" were against him.
• Gave the first ever course taught about sociology, thus launching it as an academic discipline
  • Others soon followed.
  • First American textbook on sociology (Spencer was British): Lester Ward's Dynamic Sociology" here

Sketch of William Graham Sumner (1889)

Popular Science Monthly 35

• Believed that if sociology borrowed evolutionary theory, it would render it back again enriched.
• First ever sociology course in the world at Yale in 1879.
  • Sumner's The Study of Sociology as the course textbook.
  • Immediately popular course.

Starr (1925)

Biography of William Graham Sumner here

• p. 346-7: Yale President Noah Porter wrote a letter to Sumner in 1879 objecting to using Spencer's The Sutyd of Sociology
  • Was certain it would bring "intellectual and moral harm" to undergraduates.
  • It "attacks every theistic philosophy of society and history"
  • Alleges it sarcastically assumes material laws are the only ones science can recognize.
• p. 351: Controversy over Sumner's use of Spencer's book as a textbook was totally internal to Yale, and was dying down. Until the NY Times caught wind of it: religion vs science! academic freedom!
• p. 362-9: Yale President had represented Sumner as not using the Spencer book s a textbook in his class anymore
  • Sumner began steps for resigning, looking for new work.
  • But also decided the controversy around the book had become a distraction to the class, so stopped teaching with it.

Princeton Review no. 56 (1880)

• Yale President Noah Porter writes
  • Spencer is proposing an atheistic theory of sociology
  • Atheism is bad in the physical sciences, but even worse in the social and political sciences.
  • Insisted society be guided by faith in Providence and inspiration of the living God.

New York Times (April 1880)

• April 3
• April 4
  • Sumner quoted as saying:
    • Spencer's take on religion? Not my business.
    • But his book The Study of Sociology is the only thing of its kind in the English language.
    • Said he'd resign from Yale if he couldn't use this as a textbook, because he'd be too "hedged about" and "restricted."
• April 5
  • 11 of 19 members of Yale board of Directors were clergymen

Holt (1923)

Garrulities of an Octogenerian Editor, chapter IV especially.

• Apparently something written by an editor/publisher named Henry Holt (cited in Carniero, 1974)
• Chapter IV appears to be about Yale.
• p. 87: "Sumner was the Moses who led the institution out of the Egyptian darkness."

Staloff, lecture on Sumner (ca. 1992)

Dr Darren Staloff, colleague of Dr. Michael Sugrue, lectures here

• "America's most famous Social Darwinist"
• In social Darwinism, society is seen as contiguous with nature. A struggle for scarce resources. Derives from Malthus.
• Spencer's social Darwinism was "philosophically elaborate," but Sumner popularized it even more.
• for a generation, social Darwinism dominated the intellectually engaged culture.
• Social Darwinism is part of positivism. No room for sentimentality. It's also a defense of industrial capitalism.
• Social Darwinism defends the tents of the American Gilded age.
• Social Darwinism can come across as gloomy, but it's actually predicated on the notion that society WILL progress if we don't get in its way.

• Sumner: Capital is accumulated labor. Factories, tools, cash, assets, facilities, plants, etc
• Sumner: Capital is the key to societal development.
  • Fire was the first capital. Then flint tools. Things that can produce other things, leading to progress.
  • Capital first emerges as tools and technologies, means of production.
  • Sumner sees capital as what separates us from the animals. [No divine dignity or God concept]
  • Temperate zones like Europe are where capital develops. Here, living is neither too easy (tropics) nor too hard (arctic)
  • Sumner: Failure to deploy capital in the best way possible (e.g. a welfare state) will actually retrogress society, and make things even worse for the poorest people.
  • Sumner: Let capital deploy itself as efficiently as possible, with minimal regulation, and the rising tide will lift all ships
  • Accumulation of capital entails some asceticism, self-denial.
• Sumner: Labor conditions have improved as society evolves
  • Primitive patriarchy (women as slaves) -> Slavery of antiquity -> serfdom -> guilds -> etc -> FREE LABOR system
  • Free labor is based on voluntary contract of wages for labor. Not coercion like previous societies.
  • Sumner knows this has drawbacks. A primitive hierarchical society has security. Example: slaves in US used to have old-age insurance and minimal standard of living. Yet no one would want to live this way, argues Sumner [seems some people today crave this again]
  • Sentiment reigned in the feudal period (e.g. noblesse oblige). Free labor is cold, calculating, even self interested.
  • Yes, we've lost sentimentality says Sumner. But it's a price worth paying for the progress we gain.
• Sumner imagines birth control emerging naturally
  • It's hard to accumulate capital with children and a wife.
  • Sumner says a man should not have a wife and children until he's accumulated some capital.
  • The lower classes should self-limit their population out of self-interest (too many of them means too many workers for too few jobs).
  • This all sounds hard-hearted toward the working class, observes Staloff. Or at least not sentimental (Sumner would agree, it's unsentimental. Self-denial. Sacrifices. His father was a worker and taught him this.)

• Social darwinism always has a strong stance on the role of the State.
  • Hegel romanticized the State. Spencer said that's nonsense. It's just "all of us."
  • Locke's triad: life, liberty, property IS the same as life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness (property is capital, capital provides leisure, leading to self-improvement and happiness)
• Social Darwinism is utterly at odds with utilitarianism, which saw the State as legislating happiness. No, in social Darwinism only ensures you can pursue happiness; the state should NOT ensure it, only those deserves it should obtain it.
• Liberty (civil liberty) is an end unto itself in social darwinism.
• Only individuals have liberties and rights, not groups, in social darwinism.

• Sumner is clear eyed: each social class tried to use the state to unfairly extract resources from other classes (those resources are either capital, or labor). Liberty exists to obstruct these attempts.
  • Goal is for liberty is to obstruct EVERY class from lording over the other. It's only 300-400 years old. A modern conception. Without it society evolves into dictatorship.
• Oddly, this perpetual oppressor warfare sounds like Marx.

• Rights and duties.
  • Feudal society was stable when the aristocrats has both the right and duties. Fell apart when duties were lazily shifted to others (e.g. mercenaries to do the fighting)
  • Democracy has this risk, too. Temptation is to shift the duty to care for yourself to others. The majority my plunder the rich.
    • Sumner says don't let paupers have the rights of free man. Dependent paupers should not have suffrage.
  • Plutocracy (distortion of democracy by the wealthy) also is a risk. Sumner saw it as a big danger.
    • Its army is lobbyists practicing "jobbery" -- the rich getting the government to spend money on contracts -- subsidize their industry.
    • Strong constructivist judiciary checks plutocracy.

• What do free men owe to each other? Nothing except civility, law-abiliding good nature, and co-operation when it's in mutual interest.
  • Work. Feed yourself. If you can, you can have a family. And take care of them If you've done that, you've lived a full life.
  • There is no responsibility to care for someone who's been imprudent. You are responsible for your own poor use of liberty.
  • A free society could even be a socialist society, as long as it's free.

• Sumner supported the labor movement. He came from a working class family.
  • Unions can negotiate good things. But don't let the State nanny you. You're strong!
  • Hostile to the State promoting social welfare.
  • At their best, social reformers are naive do-gooders. At worst, their calls are self-centered attempts to create middle-class jobs for themselves in the State's bureaucracy (perhaps they don't even REALLY care for the poor)

• Sumner thinks the tinkering of do-gooders is the source of problems.
• Just let society be a "sound and natural" competitive social order.

• "The forgotten man" is that person the social reformer always posits taking resources FROM, so they're given to the oppressed person du jour.

• Bottom line: Sumner criticizes the Prodigal Son. "If you want to go out and have a party, why should I have to pay for it?"
• Social darwinism legacy:
  • Preeminence of the individual. Rejected the hierarchy seen in Christianity.
  • Classical libertarianism. Rejects all forms of social legislatin (even moral things like prohibition)
  • Optimism in ability of mankind to progress

The Sumner Papers

• Sumner papers at Yale
• Perhaps what started it all: Spencer's 1873 The Study of Sociology
  • Sumner was hugely influenced by this.
  • Yale president thought it could harm the undergraduates.
  • "One of 13 books that changed America." Tremendously popular when published.
  • Spencer keyed into evolutionary thought several years before Darwin published Origin of Species.